Jewellery Box Memories

I was going through all of my jewellery yesterday and the memories attached to them go way back and I thought it'd make a nice mini series on here to share some of those. This will be part one and I will see how it goes.

This is my jewellery box which was a Christmas Present years and years ago from my Grandma and I've had to glue it back together a few times but it does the job well.

I bought this necklace last year whilst I was staying in a tiny fishing village called Port Issac in Cornwall. The cottage we were staying in was one wall of an alley which is the smallest in the world called 'squeeze belly alley' and it really was so tiny that the suitcases got stuck when we went through it. It was from one of the shops there. Since then, it has been an on and off companion as it is perfect for living by the beach as it doesn't have parts to go rusty or break.

This is from a shipwreck museum in Rossilli bay on the Gower Peninsula in Wales where I went on holiday a few years ago. I think that it is just one of those standard pieces of jewellery sold in tourist shops everywhere. It is made of a blue stone called Howlite and it is meant to be a 'super calming stone' and 'an excellent antidote to insomnia due to an overactive mind' and all of that other weird stuff which is a bit weird and if you believe that, that's cool but I just bought it because blue is my favorite colour and I loved the changes in colours and as you will probably be able to tell through this series, I like natural jewellery.

This bracelet was made in Africa by some ladies in a village which name escapes my memory but a man from my church bought some back with him and sold them for about £3 or thereabouts and all of that money would go to them and I liked the look of it anyway but if you can help someone along in the meantime it's such a bonus. I don't know if you will be able to see from the pictures but the beads are actually made of paper. I have done something similar before where you get a long triangle strip and roll it up as small as you can but I love how you can barely tell as they are solid and take the appearance of wood. 

This was a gift from my Aunt for being a bridesmaid at her wedding which was mad but she went completely crazy with the wedding especially as we wore pearly necklaces which we got to keep. There is no specific memory attached to this piece but it's origins are a memory in themselves to me. On the wedding day, during the best mans speech I found out about how many cars my uncle has crashed and all about when he was younger. It was in Scotland and so I knew no one beyond my own family and when you are 12 as I was, you will never avoid the 'school' and 'future' questions from strangers who are just trying to make convosation.

So there we are, there are a few of the pieces in my little collection. I have so much wooden, stone and natural jewellery but that is my favorite type. Feel free to do this yourself showing the meaning and stories behind some of your jewellery.

Country Lanes

When the sun comes out the town and surrounding villages come to life and although the population is made up of a lot of old people, you do get a lot more smiles. This weekend I had a morning to kill so me and my sister, Lucy went on a little cycle in the country side around where we live and explored villages we didn't even know existed.
Our first stop was the castle where on a good day you can see two miles down to the sea and the view over the fields really is stunning. We then traveled through some country lanes, past too many farms to be able to count them and up and down rather a lot of hills. All in all it was around eleven miles and was a lovely way to spend an early summers morning!
Just as a final note, my laptop has broken with my editing software on it and I have had to steal my brothers, so these pictures are raw from my camera resulting in some of the exposure and white balance being off but it doesn't matter too much.
Have an amazing day!

The Start of the Summer Days

This photo was taken on a recent day out with some friends. March is now underway and we have had a burst of good weather here in England which, dispite the earliness in the year, it is long awaited. We all cycled into my village and had a little wander while eating buns from the bakers and talking about what good times this summer will bring.

Spring Is Here!

I am a firm believer that it is spring already. The temperature has reached seventeen degrees this week and I refuse to wear a coat now although the temperature is not as warm as that. These are some pictures of the flowers that come up outside my house every spring time and they were one of the many things that made my day so great.

Sorry that a lot of the pictures are over exposed and glaring but the sun was so bright that I couldn't get the white balance right.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

I started reading 'The Forty Rules of Love' by Elif Shadak yesterday as I got it out from the library. That's right, I rented a book which never happens. I got a new card and searched the shelves for anything inspiring as I had just finished 'Lands Beyond the Sea' which was about the discovering of Australia and how the aborigines sacred lands were completely destroyed and taken over by the convict colony, and wanted something equally as deep rooted in foreign history.

This book is predominantly about a middle aged woman called Ella who is wrapped up in her world where she lives without love: as if everything in her life is a chore but one day, she gets given this book to write a report on written by Azziz who couldn't be the opposite and has a fascination with the scholar Romi and the book follows both the stories of Ella and Romi learning and growing as people and changing due to someone entering their lives. 

    I definitely recommend it as it is easy to read and the characters are so intriguing as it is rooted in 13th centuaty cities such as Constantinople, Konya and Baghdad but also the present day and both situations are identifiable. I am about two thirds of the way through and an thoroughly enjoying it!

Story Telling One

    Yesterday was the first day of the Christmas season which for me, is signified for me by walking along streets lit with Christmas lights. It's sort of a little compensation from the day ending so early and the night ending so late. On the first day of Christmas, I went shopping in Brighton with some of my friends which was, as always, something which I will struggle to forget. 
    We were walking up to Churchill Square from a trip to Lush which is inconveniently placed quite far away from everywhere we wanted to go and me one friend were walking really quite fast so that we could sit down and have some food because have you ever found that after shopping for a little while, you get a tad stressed, and food is always the answer for this. We realised that the rest our little group were no longer behind us and we just thought that they'd stopped and found a shop that they wanted to go into which they do a lot and is rather annoying  but really, they were stood there with bird poo splattered all over them. It was splattered over the four of them and unfortunately, I was the only one who found the funny side but in those situations, you've just got to laugh. They were literally covered in We spent about twenty minutes after that in the disabled toilet de-pooing my friends, but for the most part, I was laughing too much to be of much help so you can imagine how popular I was. 
    I will post a little 'haul' of what I bought and the pictures that I took when I get my camera back later.
    

Surf Art

This is an example of some of the work that I have completed for my Art GCSE. Enjoy!

I never thought that I'd be able to actually paint this picture but when I found it on exposed monkeys facebook page I fell in love with the colours and the cloud formation and I had to try and it turned out a lot better than I expected. Exposed monkey is an Australian photographer and his facebook page and website are both well worth a visit.

This was painted using acrylics to achieve the strong colour and reflections and I used brushes, sponges and also cotton balls to create the effect of the clouds.

http://www.exposedmonkey.com.au/

This was also painted using acrylics and is another photo by exposed monkey but I changed this one up a little to make it clearer. I love the colours in this and I liked this so much that I painted it on a canvas and gave it to my mum for her birthday and it sits on her mantle piece in her room. I used cotton on this one too and also some flat top cotton buds to create the spray on the wave and all over the picture. 

Drew Brophy

 We all had to pick out an artist to copy the style of and I found Drew Brophy on google search and I fell in love with his art. It's so expressive and full of colour and emotion and I think he is a real inspiration.

http://www.drewbrophy.com/

I had to use a lot of different media besides my trusty acrylic paints so I used water colours for this and I built up the colour so that it would be be bold and I am really happy with how this turned out.

 This is another copy of his work which I love. I used my acrylics for this one and I really enjoyed painting it and mixing all of the colours although the wave was quite hard to blend the colours with. I especially love the sun on this painting and how it blends out.

I love this. This was the first piece of his work that I copied to see if i could do it and I just love how freeing it is. I used chalk for this which is a media that I have always hated but after using them for this I quite like them.

 This is the complete page that I did on the artist Drew Brophy. I love his style of painting and I think he is a truly amazing and inspirational artist and if you want to find out more about him, visit his website which is so impressive!

http://www.drewbrophy.com/



This painting is huge in real life and it took a lot of work and a lot of paint to create when I did it about a year ago now. We had to paint natural things and I was having a lot of trouble so my replacement art teacher at the time told me about what artists hundreds of years ago used to do. As art was so expensive to do, the only people who could afford to do it properly was the church and they only allowed the artists paint things related to Christianity so what they did was they painted a huge and beautiful landscape and then did a little bible scene in the corner and that was classed as okay. So what my art teacher told me to do was paint something that excited me. Something which I love and which inspires me and when I found this photograph, something just clicked and it was this which inspired me to do my whole theme as surfing.

A Place In Your Heart

No distractions. Just the blinking of a line on a page; hungry for the ideas which haven't yet formed inside my head. Seemingly waiting for some inspiration to take hold of me so that it can skim across the page, recording my thoughts.

My day wasn't the best I've ever had. I've got so accustomed to writing essays that I could diverge all of these reasons and analyse them all so that I could write a detailed conclusion but I really don't like doing that so, in short: My fears were confirmed today but it didn't hurt me as much as I thought it would, but I think this was because it was the truth that I had unconsciously accepted. I have also come to a realisation that, when I play my flute, it sounds beautiful. Beauty has a direct connection to the heart. Whatever you find beautiful holds a place in you and there is little that will make you loose sight of that love of beauty.

Beauty.